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Why Natural Ovulation is the Optimal Choice Before IVF Frozen Embryo Transfer

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IVF Treatment Options

Exploring Diverse IVF Treatment Options: Insights and Effectiveness Research

Credit: Zephyr/Science Photo Library

Recent findings from a comprehensive randomized trial indicate that natural ovulation methods for preparing the uterus for frozen embryo transfer after in vitro fertilization (IVF) are equally effective and come with fewer risks compared to traditional hormone therapy.

Emerging data suggests that for women with strong responses to IVF treatment (which can yield multiple eggs), freezing embryos and transferring them in a later cycle can enhance success rates. Consequently, frozen embryos now represent the majority of embryo transfers conducted globally.

Post-IVF, the crucial timing for transferring frozen embryos into the uterus occurs during the menstrual cycle when the endometrium (the uterine lining) is adequately thick to facilitate implantation.

Women can opt for either a medicated cycle, which involves administering estrogen and progesterone for uterine preparation, or a natural cycle, where the body’s natural hormone production is monitored, assuming regular cycles.

Determining the optimal choice remains complex due to a lack of substantial trials evaluating the complications linked to these varying methods.

To address this uncertainty, Daimin Wei and a team from Shandong University in Jinan, China, conducted a large-scale clinical trial involving 4,376 women across 24 fertility treatment centers. All participants were aged 20 to 40 and were slated for a single frozen embryo transfer. Participants were divided equally between the medicated and natural cycle groups.

“This is the randomized controlled trial we’ve been waiting for,” remarks William Bucket from McGill University in Montreal, Canada, who was not involved in the study.

Live birth rates were comparable between both methods, with 41.6% in the natural cycle group and 40.6% in the medicated group. This suggests that natural ovulation is as effective as hormone therapy for preparing the uterus for embryo implantation.

However, an analysis of maternal complications during and after pregnancy revealed notable distinctions.

Women utilizing natural cycles exhibited a lower likelihood of preeclampsia, a severe condition marked by elevated blood pressure, along with fewer incidences of early pregnancy loss. They were also less prone to develop placenta accreta spectrum, a condition that makes the placenta difficult to detach following childbirth. Additionally, this group had reduced rates of cesarean sections and severe postnatal hemorrhage.

“These risks impact both maternal and fetal health during pregnancy and hold significance for long-term postpartum health,” states Wei.

“This research is vital,” notes Tim Child, Chair of the Scientific and Clinical Progress Advisory Committee of the UK Human Fertilization and Embryology Authority. The clinic now advises individuals with regular menstrual cycles that both natural and medicated methods yield similar success rates.

However, Child points out that there is evidence suggesting natural cycles may lower the risk of preeclampsia. This reduction may be attributed to the presence of the corpus luteum, which regulates hormones necessary for preparing the uterus for pregnancy.

“This extensive study corroborates and expands on previous findings, especially concerning significantly lower rates of preeclampsia, early miscarriage, placenta accreta, cesarean sections, and postpartum hemorrhage linked to the natural cycle approach,” Child asserts.

Wei’s team is set to analyze blood samples gathered during the trial to identify potential biomarkers that could shed light on the differences observed in pregnancy complications.

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Trump Signs Executive Order to Transfer TikTok Ownership to U.S. Investors

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On Thursday, Donald Trump signed an executive order outlining the terms for the transaction that will transfer ownership of TikTok to US-based owners.

Trump announced that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping had reached a consensus to dissociate the popular social media platform from Chinese ownership, allowing TikTok to continue its operations in the US. He stated that the deal aligns with existing laws that mandate the closure of apps targeting American users unless they are sold to US entities.

“I spoke with President Xi, and he said, ‘Please proceed with that,'” Trump mentioned at a press briefing. “This will always be manipulated in America.”

Under this new arrangement, American investors are expected to acquire the majority of TikTok’s business and will manage the licensed versions of the app’s robust recommendation algorithms. It is anticipated that US entities will hold around 80% of the new spinoff company, with ByteDance and Chinese investors retaining less than 20%. The White House stated that the revamped TikTok will be governed by a seven-member board, composed mainly of American cybersecurity and national security specialists.

JD Vance reported that the new US entity is projected to be valued at $14 billion. He also indicated at the press conference that its estimated valuation is approximately $330 billion, in contrast to Meta, the parent company of Facebook and Instagram, which is estimated at $1.8 trillion.

Leading the group of American TikTok investors is Oracle, a US software giant, which will manage TikTok’s US functions, provide cloud computing for user data storage, and oversee app algorithm licenses. According to White House officials, ByteDance and Chinese authorities will not have access to US user data.

In addition to Oracle and its co-founder Larry Ellison, Trump mentioned that notable investors include media tycoon Rupert Murdoch and the CEO of Dell Technologies. “Great investors. The biggest. They’re not going to get bigger,” Trump stated. Vance noted that details regarding the transaction participants will be disclosed in the upcoming days.

When asked if TikTok would prioritize MAGA-oriented content, Trump responded, “I’ve always liked MAGA-related content, and I could be 100% MAGA-related if feasible,” but emphasized that the app would still promote a diverse range of content, affirming, “All groups will be treated fairly.”

This agreement has been under legal scrutiny for several months and represents a significant shift in the US social media landscape, giving domestic companies increased influence in the industry. TikTok currently has about 180 million users in the United States, and Trump believes it will aid his bid for the 2024 presidential election. This move is part of Trump’s administration’s broader strategy to gain leverage in the tech sector, having recently acquired a 10% stake in chip manufacturer Intel, prompting major companies like Apple and Nvidia to invest significantly domestically.

Trump had previously mentioned that the US government would receive favorable fees from US investors in negotiating deals with China. Last week, he stated: “The US is getting a very paid plus – I call it a paid – just to make a deal.”

However, when pressed on this matter, the president simply stated that the US would collect standard taxes from the new company, adding, “We’re going to make money; we’re going to earn a lot from taxes.”

TikTok has faced bipartisan opposition from lawmakers concerning data privacy and allegations of using the app to spread propaganda or undermine American democracy. Although TikTok has consistently denied these accusations, Congress overwhelmingly voted last year to compel the company to find a US buyer or face a domestic ban.

In January, the Supreme Court unanimously upheld the ban. On his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order delaying the prohibition and subsequently postponed its enforcement. The “TikTok savings” Presidential order Trump signed on Thursday asserted that the agreement conformed to laws established by Congress and represented a “qualified sale” that addressed national security concerns. The agreement is not expected to be finalized for another 120 days.

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At the press conference, Trump mentioned that “young people” were rooting for him to “save TikTok.” He believes he was inspired by Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist who recently encouraged him to engage with social media platforms.

“Charlie was very helpful to me. He said, ‘We should go to TikTok,'” Trump recounted.

Last week, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bescent announced that the US and China had established a trading framework following extensive discussions in Madrid, pivoting on TikTok’s future. China’s chief trade negotiator, Li Chengang, later confirmed the agreement and cautioned against US attempts to “control” Chinese firms.

Trump also alluded to the deal last week but refrained from divulging specific details.

“We’ve also reached agreements concerning “specific” companies that the youth in our nation are eager to see preserved. They will be quite pleased!” he posted on Truth Social.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Nearly one-third of Tuvaluans Seek Climate Transfer Visas

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Tuvalu is highly susceptible to rising sea levels

Photo: Mario Tama/Getty Images

What does it mean to lose your home because of climate change? About 10,000 residents of Tuvalu will soon find out.

With an average elevation of less than 3 meters, Tuvalu is on the brink of becoming uninhabitable due to floods, storm surges, and erosion. By 2100, a predicted rise in sea levels of 72 centimeters could result in one-third of the Coral Atoll Archipelago being submerged annually.

Yet, there are escape options for the people of Tuvalu. In late 2023, the Australian government revealed plans for the world’s first organized migration program.

Under the Australian-Tuvalu-Falapilli Union Treaty, 280 Tuvaluans will be granted residency in Australia each year through a lottery system. The inaugural lottery opened on June 16 and received applications from 3,125 citizens—nearly a third of Tuvalu’s population. Registration for this year’s lottery closes on July 18.

In a statement to New Scientist, the Australian government acknowledged the “devastating effects of climate change, especially in the Pacific, which faces challenges related to climate, security, and wellbeing.”

“This is the first agreement of its kind globally, offering a dignified migration pathway as climate conditions worsen,” the government commented.

Successful lottery applicants will learn their results by the end of July, with the first migrants likely to arrive in Australia by year-end.

Bateteba Aselu, a PhD student at the University of Melbourne, examines the climate challenges facing her people. On a student visa in Australia, Aselu is considering applying for the lottery to join her husband, while her son, a recent high school graduate, has already submitted his application.

Aselu notes that the impacts of climate change are visible, as the freshwater aquifers critical for agriculture and drinking water are becoming saline due to rising sea levels. This forces residents to uproot crops in an attempt to mitigate saltwater intrusion.

Stephen Howes from the Australian National University in Canberra describes the new visa as “very progressive,” providing successful applicants access to nearly all Australian health and welfare benefits without discrimination based on chronic health conditions, disabilities, age, or other factors.

While ostensibly aimed at aiding Tuvalu in the face of a climate crisis, Howes asserts that Australia’s initiative also serves to counteract China’s influence in the Pacific. The treaty outlines that Australia and Tuvalu “must collaborate on security and defense matters pertaining to the island nations and external countries.”

“I view it as a security transition agreement,” Howes explains. “Climate change serves as a backdrop, but the arrangement essentially provides Australia with enhanced security cooperation in return for offering Tuvalu a unique migration pathway.”

Tuvaluans engaging in traditional fishing

Mick Tsikas/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock

Jane McAdam at the University of New South Wales in Sydney reports varied perspectives on the future among Tuvaluans. Some believe the island will soon be submerged, while others hold hope. She notes that elderly residents express a desire to remain there until their last days.

However, McAdam considers the new migration program to be a “fair and constructive” initiative. A key feature is that once Tuvaluans secure a visa, they can return home whenever they wish or even live there until conditions become unbearable.

It’s “like having an oxygen mask on an airplane,” McAdam adds. “Ideally, you won’t need it, but you’ll be grateful it exists.”

Wesley Morgan, also at the University of New South Wales, remarked that, should conditions worsen, Tuvaluans face limited escape routes. This agreement could pave the way for similar opportunities for other at-risk nations like Kiribati.

“This could set a precedent as the first instance where migration pathways are explicitly linked to climate change and rising sea levels,” Morgan states. “Given these unique circumstances, Australia might explore comparable arrangements with Kiribati in the future.”

A remaining concern for the Tuvaluan population is how they will navigate their identity and sovereignty once they leave the island. Will they be considered a Tuvaluan diaspora or a nation in climate exile?

“If you had to leave your childhood home due to circumstances beyond your control, how would it feel?” Aselu asks. “Would you feel lost? Absolutely. It’s that sentiment of losing a cherished place that defines who you are, regardless of where you are in the world.”

“You grow up there; your history resides there. It’s where your identity is rooted, no matter where you go afterwards.”

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Cooling fabric reduces heat transfer from pavements and buildings in urban areas with high temperatures

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A scorching hot day in Bucharest, Romania, June 2019

lcv / Alamy

In the future, city dwellers could beat the heat with clothes made from new fabrics that keep them cool.

Made from plastic material and silver nanowires, the fabric is designed to keep you cool in urban environments by using the principle of radiative cooling, a natural process in which objects radiate heat back into space.

The material selectively emits a narrow band of infrared light that allows it to escape the Earth’s atmosphere, while at the same time blocking radiation from the sun and from surrounding structures.

Jo Bo-jun, a researcher from the University of Chicago, Illinois, and his team say the material “is more than half [the radiation]” from buildings and the ground,” he says.

Some cooling fabrics and building materials already use this radiative cooling principle, but most of their designs don’t take into account radiation from the sun or infrared radiation from structures like buildings and pavements, and they assume the materials are oriented horizontally against the sky, like roof panels, rather than vertically like clothing worn by a person.

Such designs “work well when they face something cooler, like the sky or a field,” Su says, “but not when they face an urban heat island.”

Xu and his colleagues designed a three-layered fabric: the inner layer is made from common clothing fabrics like wool or cotton, and the middle layer is made up of silver nanowires that reflect most of the radiation.

The top layer is made of a plastic material called polymethylpentene, which does not absorb or reflect most wavelengths and emits a narrow band of infrared light.

In outdoor tests, the fabric remained 8.9°C (16°F) cooler than regular silk fabric and 2.3°C (4.1°F) cooler than a broad-spectrum radiation-emitting material. When tested against the skin, the fabric was 1.8°C (3.2°F) cooler than cotton fabric.

Su said this slight difference in temperature could theoretically increase the amount of time a person can comfortably be exposed to heat by up to a third, but that this has yet to be tested.

“It’s always been difficult to make this material practical as a fiber.” Aswath Raman, the UCLA researcher added that the study is a good example of applying the physical principles of radiative cooling to a practical material. Other materials with similar properties could also be used on vertical surfaces in buildings, he said.

Science
DOI: 10.1126/science.adl0653

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Source: www.newscientist.com

Physicists successfully transfer electron spin to photon

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A team of physicists led by Dr. Yuan Lu of the Jean Lamour Institute at the University of Lorraine used electrical pulses to manipulate magnetic information into polarized signals. This discovery could revolutionize long-distance optical communications, including between Earth and Mars. This breakthrough involves the field of spintronics, which aims to manipulate the spin of electrons to store and process information.

Structure of SOT Spin LED: Control of emission intensity and charging current is the basis of information transfer and processing. In contrast, robust information storage and magnetic random access memory are implemented using carrier spins and their associated magnetizations in ferromagnets. The missing link between the respective fields of photonics, electronics, and spintronics is modulating the circular polarization of emitted light rather than its intensity through electrically controlled magnetization.Dynon other. demonstrated that this missing link is established in light-emitting diodes at room temperature in the absence of an applied magnetic field through the transfer of angular momentum between photons, electrons, and ferromagnets.Image credit: Dynon other., doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07125-5.

Spintronics has been successfully used in magnetic computer hard drives, where information is represented by the direction of electron spin and its proxy, magnetization.

Ferromagnetic materials such as iron and cobalt have an unequal number of electrons, with their spins oriented either along or against the magnetization axis.

Electrons with spins aligned with the magnetization move smoothly in a ferromagnetic material, while electrons with spins in the opposite direction bounce. This represents binary information of 0’s and 1’s.

The resulting change in resistance is a key principle in spintronic devices, where magnetic states can be maintained indefinitely, which can be considered stored information.

Just as a refrigerator magnet requires no power to stick to a door, spintronic devices require much less power than traditional electronics.

But like pulling a fish out of water, when an electron is removed from a ferromagnetic material, the spin information is quickly lost and can no longer travel far.

This major limitation can be overcome by utilizing circularly polarized light, also known as helicity, as another spin carrier.

Just as humans used homing pigeons centuries ago to carry written communication farther and faster than on foot, the trick is to transfer the spin of an electron to a photo, a quantum of light. That’s probably true.

Such transfer is possible due to the presence of spin-orbit coupling, which causes spin information loss outside the ferromagnetic material.

The key missing link is to electrically modulate the magnetization and thereby change the helicity of the emitted light.

“The concept of spin LEDs was first proposed at the end of the last century,” Dr. Lu said.

“But to move into practical use, it must meet three important criteria: it must operate at room temperature, it does not require a magnetic field, and it must be able to be electrically controlled.”

“After more than 15 years of dedicated work in this field, our collaborative team has managed to overcome all obstacles.”

In their research, Dr. Lu and his colleagues succeeded in switching the magnetization of a spin injector using an electric pulse that uses spin-orbit torque.

The electron spin is rapidly converted into information contained in the helicity of the emitted photon, allowing seamless integration of magnetization dynamics and photonic technology.

This electrically controlled spin-to-photon conversion is currently realized with electroluminescence in light-emitting diodes.

In the future, through implementation in semiconductor laser diodes, so-called spin lasers, this highly efficient information encoding will pave the way for high-speed communication across interplanetary distances, since the polarization of light is preserved in spatial propagation. It is possible and could potentially make it possible. The fastest mode of communication between Earth and Mars.

It also has significant benefits for the development of a variety of advanced technologies on Earth, including photonic quantum communications and optical computing, neuromorphic computing for artificial intelligence, and ultra-fast and highly efficient optical transmitters for data centers and light-fidelity applications. will bring about.

“The realization of spin-orbit torque spin injectors is a decisive step in the development of ultrafast and energy-efficient spin lasers for next-generation optical communications and quantum technologies,” said Professor Nils Gerhardt of Ruhr University. ” he said.

team's work It was published in the magazine Nature.

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PA Dynon other. 2024. Optical helicity control by electromagnetic switching. Nature 627, 783-788; doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07125-5

Source: www.sci.news